## Datasets

This Harvard Dataverse entry includes the following datasets (use the UTF-8 encoding when reading any of the below files into R or Python):

precops.cleaned.csv: Individual attendee records for a series of pre-(UNFCCC) COP meetings (specifically, INCs 1-11), with entries recorded in their original language. The variables included in this dataset are Group_Type, Delegation, Honorific, Person_Name, Job_Title, Division, Affiliation, Relation, Virtual, Overflow, Year, Meeting, Location, Female, IGO, NGO, Observer, Party, and IO.

cops.cleaned.csv: attendee records from all UNFCCC COP meetings to date (specifically, COPs 1-28) with entries recorded in their original language. The variables included are Group_Type, Delegation, Honorific, Person_Name, Job_Title, Division, Affiliation, Relation, Virtual, Overflow, Year, Meeting, Location', Female, IGO, NGO, Observer, Party, and IO.

precops.cleaned.translated.csv: includes attendee records for a series of pre-(UNFCCC) COP meetings (specifically, INCs 1-11) wherein entries that were originally in Spanish or French for Delegation, Job_Title, Division, and Affiliation were translated to English. The variables included are Group_Type, Delegation, Honorific, Person_Name, Job_Title, Division, Affiliation, Relation, Virtual, Overflow, Year, Meeting, Location, Female, IGO, NGO, Observer, Party, and IO.

cops.cleaned.translated.csv: contains attendee records from all UNFCCC COP meetings to date (specifically, COPs 1-28) wherein entries that were originally in Spanish or French for Delegation, Job_Title, Division, and Affiliation were translated to English. The variables included are Group_Type, Delegation, Honorific, Person_Name, Job_Title, Division, Affiliation, Relation, Virtual, Overflow, Year, Meeting, Location, Female, IGO, NGO, Observer, Party, and IO.


## Variables

For each of the above datasets, more detailed descriptions of all variables are as follows:

Group_Type: A categorical variable denoting the type of group that an attendee's delegation was associated with. That is, whether the attendee's overall delegation was categorized as a formal UNFCCC COP party, an observer country or entity, a non-governmental organization, an inter-governmental organization, a unit to the UN, or another affiliated organization.

Delegation: The name of the formal country delegation or non-state organization that the individual is representing at that COP.

Honorific: a standardized set of honorifics, as self-reported by each attendee.

Person Name: The attendee's full name, in "First Last" name format.

Job Title: The attendee's optionally provided job title.

Division: Any additional optional information provided by the attendee for the division associated with their delegation and/or job title.

Affiliation: A secondary organization or unit affiliation, as optionally reported by the attendee.

Relation: A string variable indicating (for applicable years, when provided) the relationship between the attendee and the attendee delegation, with categories such as "Guest of the nominating entity", "Unpaid advisor capacity", or "Partner/sponsorship of the nominating entity."

Virtual: A binary variable that distinguishes between physical and virtual participation, where 0 denotes physical (that is, in-person) attendance and 1 indicates virtual attendance.

Overflow: A binary variable that distinguishes between standard and overflow participation designations, where 0 denotes non-overflow (that is, standard) attendance and 1 indicates overflow-designated attendance.
  
Year: For a given attendee, the year in which the COP meeting that they attended occurred, as extracted directly from the file name of the original (pre-)-COP document.
  
Meeting: A concatenation of "COP" or "pre-COP" with the meeting's relevant number (e.g., "COP 27"). This variable accordingly provides a unique identifier for the (pre-)COP that a given attendee record corresponded to.
  
Location: This string variable indicates the geographic location the (pre-)COP session that an attendee attended. It has been standardized and corrected for typographical and OCR errors.
  
Female: A binary variable that distinguishes between female, male, and other attendees, where 0 denotes a non-female attendee, 1 indicates a female attendee, and NA denotes an attendee that we could not assign to either the male or female designation based upon their provided honorific or absence thereof.
  
Group affiliations: These include separate indicator variables for IGO (Intergovernmental Organizations), NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations), Observer, Party, and IO (related to "United Nations Secretariat units and bodies" and "Specialized agencies and related organizations"). These binary variables classify participants into categories reflecting the organizational affiliations and roles of their delegations at each (pre-)COP. 

Delegation_COW: A numeric identifier variable that provides COW country-codes for Party and Observer state delegations.

Delegation_ISO: A string identifier variable that provides three letter ISO country-codes for Party and Observer state delegations.

#Additional resources

Further details on these datasets, variables, and the methods used to produce these data can be found in: Blinova, D., R. Emuru, and B.E. Bagozzi. 2024. "Individual Attendance Data for over 30 Years of International Climate Change Talks.'' Scientific Data 11, 1134.

Further details on the code and intermediate inputs needed for producing these data can be found at: https://github.com/bagozzib/UNFCCC-Attendance-Data

For questions, please contact Benjamin E. Bagozzi at bagozzib@udel.edu

